


Ash and Dust

by Adohug



Category: The Prom - Sklar/Beguelin/Martin
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/F, ill explain as i go, it's post-apocalyptic if you couldnt tell from the radioactive title
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22026298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adohug/pseuds/Adohug
Summary: Emma Nolan isn’t quite sure how she knows this name. She just knows that those sounds are in reference to herself, just like she knows that before the Cataclysm, there were more people.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the discord has been teased about this for so long
> 
> huge shoutout to wisdom, my twin and hype (wo)man throughout me writing this

This story doesn’t begin with her tearing away the years of growth from the stagnant wheels of the truck. She doesn’t start the tale by forcing the hood open to check the engine and wincing at the rusty squeak the hinges make. She doesn’t say “once upon a time” when the long-lost key finally turns the engine over and the gas tank is half full. It isn’t a dark and stormy night when she packs up a week’s worth of supplies that she’ll only use half of. 

The story really began three years ago, but for the sake of brevity it begins when she drives past the sign of Edgewater, Indiana.

——————————

She parks the truck behind the sign, close enough that she can put up the tarp and be protected from any elements that might show up in the middle of the night. She’s not planning on staying the night, but she’s prepared in case she needs to. She grabs her daypack and climbs out of the cab of the truck, her boots making a squelching sound as they land in untouched mud. Locking the doors behind her, she pushes her blonde hair away from her cracked lenses and makes a mental note to cut it when she gets back. She takes one last look around her, surveying the rolling hills she drove past to get here, and heads into town. 

After a couple of houses she passes a gas station, though only the pumps make her aware of what it is. It’s covered in faded red and oranges, with the “24 Mart” sign proudly displaying its name to an empty world. She stops in front of it. She quickly retrieves the clipboard (knowword) with paper and pencil, scribbling out a small map of what she’s found so far. Houses and a gas station aren’t much, but houses can be checked for clothes and candles, and gas stations have all sorts of preserved food. She continues on her way, clipboard in hand. 

The houses grow closer together, rotting fences doing little to keep the plants from spreading. A bigger building sits on a corner between two equally worn out roads, and she stops in front of it. White paint peels from places, though it’s in much better condition than the houses. A bell tower (bookword) rises from the back of the building, and the wispy clouds clear long enough for the sunlight to glint off of something metallic through the bricks. She pauses in front of this building, drawing out how far she’s come since the gas station. To mark this building, she writes down the knowword “church.”

A thought occurs as she draws the church, making her pause and inhale quickly. She’s felt this before; nervous (but a good nervous), “what if”-y, slightly happy. Another knowword comes: hopeful. 

What if someone else is here?

She shakes her head. It’s been three years since the Cataclysm; she would have found someone by now. The small hopeful voice won’t stay quiet. She moves from the church. 

She doesn’t go down the big road; she takes a smaller dirt road that’s more mud than dirt from the rainfall. She came to Edgewater from the south, and finally turns from her northern path to head west. She passes house upon house, all in disuse and disrepair. She finds another dirt road and stops on the corner to mark the map. She turns northward again and takes the new road. At every corner she stops and marks the map, all while she tries vainly to stop the small voice. 

She reaches another big road and stops in the shade of a tree. The sun sits high in the sky, shining down on her when the clouds let it. She sits, updates her map, and takes a break to eat and drink. 

The meal is no different from any other meal she eats: cured meat with bread from yesterday, some vegetables from the garden and the last of the season’s berries. She also was able to pick the first apple from her tree before she left, and she takes her time finishing the fruit. With one last sip of her water, she closes her bag and stands back up. Taking a deep breath, she keeps walking. East, this time. 

She passes bigger buildings. They don’t look like the houses from earlier; they seem more important (New knowword: formal). One of them has a sign in front of it: “Town Hall.” She marks them onto the map. 

One more turn to the north makes her break into a smile, and she starts jogging towards the long building. A market! The hopeful voice arises again, and she’s too preoccupied to stop it. She pauses at the door, deciding to add the market to the map before entering. 

As she’s finishing up, a strangely-shaped indent in the mud catches her eye. She takes a step closer before recognizing it.

A footprint.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She counted herself lucky when she woke up to an overcast sky and a fresh-smelling breeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this updated sooner than i expected ill be honest

_She was scared that the rain was never going to come; it had been almost a month with no sign of rain clouds, and the well was trying to run dry. At that point she was so covered in dust and seeds and bits of grass that she looked like she had a very uneven tan when she glanced in the mirror (bookword), but with barely enough water to drink and refill the animal troughs and water the plants that need it she couldn’t bathe herself._

_She counted herself lucky when she woke up to an overcast sky and a fresh-smelling breeze. She had a feeling that the rain was coming soon, so she hurried out of the house without eating to feed the animals and finish mending the pig pen._

_She just finished tying the last bar when she felt the first drops of rain, and she sighed in joy and basked in the feeling of cool water on her dirty, pale skin before going inside._

_While she’s gone longer between baths before, it was warmer outside than the last time she had to and the grime (bookword) made her feel disgusting._

_She took off her boots and went into the kitchen (knowword) for breakfast. A bowl full of berries and nuts later, the pounding of the rain had only gotten louder, filling the space with a background noise it so often lacked. With no end in sight, she decided that today she was going to bathe. She put two buckets on the steps of the porch (bookword) and went into her sleeproom to strip and gather the smelly clothes. If she was washing herself, she was also washing the clothes that need it._

_She set the pile of clothes down and retrieved the now-full buckets. She’s impressed; it must really be raining. A crack of thunder (bookword) from the sky answered how strong the rain was. She grabbed the cleaning rag and a carefully small amount of soap and took off her glasses, leaving them on a nearby surface._

_She washed herself quickly; though there was a lot of dirt, she’s really good at getting it all off efficiently (bookword). She got her hair wet and put some soap in it, letting it sit while she started on the clothes. She wrung out a shirt and put it down on the floor before rinsing her hair out. She fingered the end of it, deciding that it didn’t need a cut today, and grabbed her glasses, going back to cleaning the clothes._

_Her hair was on its way to completely dry before she finished washing all of the clothes; the rain couldn’t have come at a better time. She looked around at all of the damp clothes, smiling… until she realized she can’t hang them up to dry when it’s raining._

_Shit._

_(Bookword)._

——————————

She blinks. She rubs her eyes. Blinks again. She takes off her glasses and half-desmudges them. Puts them back on.

That is not her footprint.

The hopeful voice shows up again; with the recent rain, there has to be a living person around to make footprints. All of the footprints disappeared from Heaven a month after the Cataclysm.

Map forgotten, she puts her learned tracking skills to use and follows the footprints. They move down the big road, veering off and onto an obviously-often-used footpath. Mud oozes out as she steps onto the path, but she can feel how packed the dirt is under her feet as she continues. 

The footpath brings her through an old chain-link fence (bookword) and across a perfectly-farmable field. If there was a building within the fence, she would move herself here… _footprints,_ she reminds herself. Right. She passes through the fenced field and onto another road, noticing that she made a diagonal trip and missed about three turns. Resolving to update the map later, she continues on.

After another street she sees more footpaths around her, heading off in different directions, other streets she hasn’t gone down. Her feet move faster now as the little hopeful voice in the back of her head starts up again. _They must all meet up somewhere! A shelter!_ She’s too busy following the path to quiet the voice.

The voice is right -- first one path merges with one, then three, then they all meet up with the one she’s been following. She turns another corner and stops, breathing heavily. 

The path continues down the street to a house that looks more used than the others. Definitely dirty and unlooked after on the outside, but the porch has fresh dirt on it and the door is ajar. She even catches movement in a window… maybe? She’s still on the corner.

She swallows, ignoring how dry her throat feels, and adjusts her daypack before continuing on. As she gets closer to the house her vision hyperfocuses (knowword) on the footpath as most of her thought process goes to keeping her breath even. She pauses on the porch, hand hovering over the doorknob.

When she opens this door, she’ll see another human being.

When she opens this door, she’ll have an excuse to talk. When was the last time she talked?

When she opens this door, she can’t know what will happen.

She hears shuffling from inside, reminding her that she (almost) isn’t (still) alone. Taking one more shaky breath, she turns the knob and steps inside.

She barely has time to register the object swinging towards her before she and her shoulder are screaming in pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any questions? pop them in the comments, I may or may not answer them depending on spoiler level


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, the farm can't be left alone for that long… but there’s more to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ive had part of this chapter written out since before i knew what i was doing with this story

_She wrung the clothes out as much as possible, but the rain hadn’t stopped yet. There’s nothing else she has to do in the house, so she left the clothes in a pile on the kitchen floor and wandered into the bookroom with an unlit candle._

_The bookroom is easily her favorite place to be on storm days. Taking care of the house comes first, but when there’s nothing to do the bookroom is where she went._

__Guns and Heartbreak, Illuminae, To Kill a Mockingbird… _She skipped the shelves (knowword) of read books and crouched down to the corner of the unread. Nothing piqued her interest, until the storm light reached_ On the Road. _She pulled the book off of the shelf and flipped it open, skimming the first few lines. Huh, interesting…_

_She made her way to a chair before really starting to read._

_The book was interesting. People traveling, meeting other people; the fact that more than one person was in one place; how easy it was to travel large distances; it got her thinking. Why hadn’t she gone out to find anyone yet?_

_Well, the farm can't be left alone for that long… but there’s more to it._

_She is alone._

_She wasn’t alone._

_She was alone._

_There had to be other people._

_There are no other people._

_There’s too much stuff in Heaven for one person._

_She can’t remember anyone._

_The books make it seem that being alone isn’t natural._

_The books on the shelves are mostly fiction._

_Fiction is reality to the left!_

_In reality, she’s alone!_

__But you weren’t! __

_“But I am!”_

_She blinked her eyes open (when did they close) as her echo (bookword) came back to her. The book lay abandoned on the ground. Her throat hurt — did she say that out loud?_

_When was the last time she spoke?_

——————————

Emma Nolan isn’t quite sure how she knows this name. She just knows that those sounds are in reference to herself, just like she knows that before the Cataclysm, there were more people. 

Now, it’s just her. As far as she can remember it’s always been just her, yet a part of her brain insists on saying that this was not always so; that there were more people in Heaven, Indiana before the Cataclysm. According to a sign on the edge of town, there were 4,358 other people at one point.

She doesn’t quite know what the Cataclysm is, either. She doesn’t quite know a lot of things; her memories are “birth, blur, blur, blur, blur, I’m in the basement with a feeling that something terrible just happened, I start the farm and find these animals, I read books when I can, occasionally words I’ve neither read nor learned about will come to me and I’ll know how to use them, I decided three years of no variety was enough and drove to the next town over where I got slammed in the shoulder with a baseball bat and am now staring at the person tending my injury that they caused.”

Emma and the new person remain in silence as they wrap her shoulder, because what else are they supposed to do? Talk?

Actually, based on books…

Breaking the silence that lay between them since her scream, she speaks. “Did I scare you?”

The person startles, brown hands pausing. Obviously, they didn’t expect her to talk. Their hands resume before they clear their throat. “Yeah, you did.”

“Oh.” Something in Emma’s brain tells her to say more. “I didn’t mean to. I was mapping out the town, and when I found the market there were recent footprints in the mud. I followed them here, and then…” Her shoulder twinged in pain at that moment, causing her to wince.

“I see.” The person’s hands fall to their lap. “I’m done.” There's a sense of finality to how they say those words, as if they expect her to stand up and leave.

Emma feels like she wants to run back to the truck and speed to Heaven while also bringing those hands back onto her shoulder and never moving. As the person moves to stand up from the couch (knowword) the two of them are seated on she compromises, following the books. “What’s your name?”

They stop, clearly surprised. “Alyssa Greene. I’m a… I’m female,” she adds as she fumbles for words of her own. “Uh, you? What are- what’s your name?”

“Emma Nolan. I’m female too.” Emma follows her lead. She sees Alyssa’s body language relax. She doesn’t realize she’s mirroring Alyssa until her back hits the cushion on the couch. “What’s your story?”

Emma talks with Alyssa until her throat goes sore, prompting her to glance outside. “Oh, shit, it’s almost sunset!”

Alyssa blinks and looks outside as well, making a small noise of surprise. “How long is your trip?”

“Not long in the truck,” she stands up. “But I need to get back to it in order to reach my farm before dark.” She heads to the door, stopping in the frame. She turns back around, mouth open, but any words she had prepared died in her throat when she laid eyes on her.

Dark hair is pulled back, but a few curly strands are free to frame her face. The rest of the skin Emma can see is the same brown as her hands, glowing in the sunrays from the window. Her head tilts, changing the angle of the light to hit her eyes, which she didn’t notice earlier. A rich chocolate, they seemed to sparkle in the light. 

“Emma, go.” She blinks. 

“Oh, right!” She turns to leave again, then turns around one last time. “I’ll… see you again?”

Alyssa grins wildly. “Yeah. Come back!”

She grins back before finally leaving, shutting the door with a resolve (bookword) to open it again one day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ta da! character two!

**Author's Note:**

> just a preview! i dont have much more completely written out so I dont know when this will next get updated
> 
> comment your thoughts! ive been developing this idea for, like, five? months, and i live off of feedback


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